It Gets Worse Each Year

"A while back," Steven Victor wrote, "I was asked to look at an issue where numerical data 'kept getting more and more inaccurate' in newer versions of a software product."

"After some searching, I came across some code that converted an integer into a string representation of the value. It used the common "itoa" function, and since it was pretty run-of-the mill data meant to be interpreted by humans, the string was supposed to a base-ten representation.

No big deal, right?

Steven continued, "Whoever wrote this code must have been studying up on design guidelines that favored “avoiding magic numbers,” as the code I came across looked like this:"